Cinnamon Stillwell

I’m the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum that focuses on Middle East studies. I was a political columnist for SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle online) from 2004-2008. I've written for the American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, Family Security Matters, Accuracy In Media, Newsbusters, Israel National News, The Jewish Policy Center, J-The Jewish News Weekly of N. CA, Intellectual Conservative and many others. More info at CinnamonStillwell.com.

Friday, February 17, 2012

John Louis Esposito for the Defense (of an Alleged, Would-be Terrorist)

This morning at American Thinker, Stephen Schwartz lays out the government's case against Khalid Ali Aldawsari, arrested earlier this month on charges of planning to build a weapon of mass destruction. Campus Watch's interest in Aldawsari stems from the identity of one of his defenders: John Esposito of Georgetown:

Professor John Louis Esposito of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. is one of the most outspoken and prolific defenders of radical Islamist ideology in Western academia. But in addition to his tenured employment in Middle East Studies, Esposito has found a second calling -- as a court expert in the trials of accused Muslim radicals.

According to the Washington-based website Politico, Esposito has been tapped as a defense witness in the case of Khalid Ali Aldawsari, a twenty-one-year-old Saudi Arabian subject arrested in February 2011 in Lubbock, Texas.

Aldawsari is charged with one count of attempting to fabricate a weapon of mass destruction -- i.e., a bomb. If he is found guilty, he may be sentenced to life imprisonment. A mental competency hearing, according to Politico, is scheduled to begin in the third week of February, with a trial set for April 30.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Iran as Victim? University of San Francisco's Stephen Zunes Thinks So

Writing for Campus Watch, Rima Greene and I report on a recent lecture from University of San Francisco professor Stephen Zunes in which the United States and Israel were portrayed as aggressors in the escalating conflict with the bellicose Iranian regime. Our article appears today at Frontpage Magazine:

A crowd of would-be revolutionaries gathered last month at Revolution Books in Berkeley to hear Stephen Zunes—chair of the program in Middle Eastern studies and professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco—speak on a panel with the improbable title, "U.S.-Israeli Assault on Iran Escalates: The Danger of War Grows." The title originated with an article by co-panelist Larry Everest, author and correspondent for Revolution, the newspaper for the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, an organization whose cult of personality revolves around well-known Stalinist Bob Avakian. Fittingly, event posters on the walls sported slogans such as "Re-visioning Socialism" and "Another World is Possible," and the shelves were filled with books by Avakian and other communists.

. . . All who entered were handed a copy of Revolution along with a flier for International A.N.S.W.E.R.'s then-forthcoming "national day of action" in San Francisco, which trumpeted the do-nothing rallying cry, "No War on Iran, No Sanctions, No Interventions, No Assassinations!" Like the rally to come, the atmosphere at Revolution Books was fiercely anti-American, anti-Israel, and apologetic towards, even supportive of, the Iranian regime.

Cinnamon Stillwell

I’m the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum that focuses on Middle East studies. I was a political columnist for SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle online) from 2004-2008. I've written for the American Thinker, Frontpage Magazine, Family Security Matters, Accuracy In Media, Newsbusters, Israel National News, The Jewish Policy Center, J-The Jewish News Weekly of N. CA, Intellectual Conservative and many others. More info at CinnamonStillwell.com.